HIGH COURT FIGHT FOR PENSION EQUALITY ON WIDOWERS PENSIONS: RESULT DUE

Yesterday, the site highlighted an under the radar issue and another one has been found, this time on Iain Cockburn who has taken the government to the High Court over the discrimination he claims to have suffered because his widower's pension is less than it would have been if the genders had been reversed.

This could be another landmark decision in the world of pensions which coupled with retirement age differences has been the clearest example of the instututional and set sponsored discrimination against men (campaign history).

While the government has admitted the law is discriminatory because it means that widowed partners of female NHS staff receive a smaller pension than partners of male NHS staff, they may still not drop anything because it would cost £4 billion to rectify across all public sector pensions.

This is an issue not raised anywhere before (I think - please tell me if so).

We wait to see the result but if the government do not bring in parity immediately if the case is won, then what more proof do we need of the discrimination against men that is endemic in Britain.

How can a government state it believes in equality and then let this discrimination remain.

Posted by Skimmington

Media coverage (for what there has been!) - GP online 1, GP online 2, Pulse, Metro

Comments

[John Kimble]

The feminists, politicians and Guardian have been strangely silent on this one.

What always amazes me is not so much the sheer volume of discrimination against men, but the fact that so much of it is perpetrated by the state.

This means it is about as easy as it gets for politicians to stop such unfairness, yet they'd sooner go round pointing fingers at private organisations or governments in far flung parts of the world instead of putting their own house in order.

I note one of the articles talks about "the many other public sector schemes to which the rule applies.", anyone know exactly which other government bodies are guilty here?

[Groan]

This is in fact a feature of other central gov. agents (police, civi servants, military) It is most obviousy in health due to the largely female workforce. This distinction doesn't occur in local government schemes and many private schemes.